


Objects in the Mirror Are

by ActuallyAndroid



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Angst, Big Spoilers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soft Pining, aka grant, not nsfw...... YET, reader is implied to be the 4th traveller, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 22:32:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16649120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActuallyAndroid/pseuds/ActuallyAndroid
Summary: He's not as far away as you think he is.





	Objects in the Mirror Are

Both metaphorically and literally, Alucard liked to keep his distance.

Or—well, that’s what you thought at first.

The first night after his father's death, he led you to what would become your permanent fixture in his castle: a room with a balcony, a large window framed by heavy, silk curtains, and a king-sized bed caged by an ornate canopy of dark, red wood. With a distant and half-hearted smile, he stood in the corner and watched you inspect your newly acquired luxuries in turn, barely illuminated by the fringes of moonlight peeking through the curtains as a ghostly, pale apparition—like something nearly there, but by all means not quite.

“This is remarkable,” you said, trailing your hand over an unlit, marble hearth. “I’ve never even seen a fireplace made from anything but iron.”

A weft-faced tapestry of a dark, flowery landscape stretched across the wall, and a long sheet of framed parchment paper listing various herbs and their uses hung just above the hearth, which you let yourself skim over before moving on. “And this!” you continued, gesturing vigorously towards the canopy. “The bed alone is worth more than every house I’ve lived in put together.”

The moonlight captured Alucard’s profile as he stepped forward from the wall, and the dark outline of his wistful expression lit with a pale glow.

“Then I take it you’re happy with your decision to stay?” he asked.

Briefly, you wondered why he phrased it like you were the one who needed convincing (when it was you that had to beg him to let you stay, explaining that you would never forgive yourself for passing up an opportunity to read a collection of texts as expansive as the one here), but you did not think about it for long.

“That’s an understatement,” you said instead. “This is miles better than spending another night in the cold, damp attic of an inn.”

Another smile graced his features, but it was deathly hollow: an empty shell with only a faint trace of amusement. “I’m happy to hear that,” he said, and although it did not feel insincere, it certainly felt _off_ somehow, like there was something buried between the lines that meant a hundred times more than what you could decipher.

Faintly, you remembered when Sypha called his sadness bottomless, like the dark, black spot of a sky completely absent of stars, because everything about him now (after his father’s death) echoed that sentiment threefold. Shortly after the fight, when you decided you had enough of feeling like the third wheel celebrating with Trevor and Sypha and went hunting for him in the castle, you caught him staring wistfully at a portrait of his mother like she still might come out of the canvas and embrace him for a job well-done.

It was only then that you remembered this was his house, his parents, and that the same man who killed your entire family was his father.

Maybe it was half the reason you decided this was where your life as a rogue would see a temporary conclusion. Sure, you probably had towns to rebuild and responsibilities to address, but you and the rest of the rebels you rallied into fighting against Dracula were long considered dead, and you figured if any place had working solutions for scurvy (a useful thing to know in case you ever fancied going back to seafaring) it would be this library.

Besides, there was something viscerally unsatisfying about leaving him here and exposing him to the loneliness of an empty house. Your entire life as a captain (though illegal and unsavoury) had always been full of other people, and there wasn’t a moment you ever felt like you had to grieve without someone to offer you a hard drink and a soft shoulder to pass out on.

“Do you want to stick together tonight?” you asked—unaware of how sudden of a request it was until he lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. “I’m—well,” you began to clarify, “I’m a little concerned about you, if I can be honest.”

“And why is that?”

“It’s been a tough day. For me. For everyone. But I think especially for you.”

He laughed, a sound so tired and lonely it was almost indistinguishable from the cold wind grazing past the curtains of your room. “Yes, I suppose that, too, is an understatement,” he said with a brittle voice. “Thank you for the offer, but I think I’d like to spend my night wandering the castle. For old time’s sake.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” he said, like he wasn’t entirely sure himself. “If that doesn’t bother you, of course.”

And what could you say? Because maybe that’s how he dealt with grief; maybe you’d be butting in; maybe it’d be presumptuous to claim he’d be better off sharing his troubles with someone who could never empathise with them; someone who was, at best, an acquaintance.

So, you settled with a dismissive, “of course not,” and any further parting words when the shuffling of his clothes announced his leave were replaced by a loose smile that did not quite reach your eyes.

You wandered the castle later that night, but if he ever saw you, he did not make his presence known.

 

* * *

 

“So how exactly do you turn someone into a vampire?” you asked, nose-deep in a book on psychology in the bowels of the Belmont hold. The warm firelight of a candle flickered in an out, agitated every time you shuffled to curl further into the animal skin you were resting against.

“I can’t say I’ve ever been witness to it,” he responded, leafing through a book with hand-written notes on weapon enchantments. “I imagine it would involve some form of biting, however.”

“Dracula never turned your mother?”

“No,” he said with a calm voice, looking down at his book, “she refused it quite fervently, believe it or not. I think my father would have had more luck trying to turn himself back into a human.”

You laughed, and he must have been somewhat surprised to hear it—because it marked the first time in the last few minutes he broke eye contact with his book to look at you.

“You know, I’ve always wondered how a human woman domesticated Dracula,” you explained, giving him a smile so inadvertently warm he felt prickles of heat boil his chest. “And every time you talk about her I think I see it a little more.”

“Well, she was quite the tempest, even with me around.”

“Certainly,” you said, still with the same smile, expecting it to bequeath the end of the conversation. Alucard did not often continue your chats through one-word responses, so when he spoke, you were about as surprised by what he said as you were by the fact he said it at all.

“She was a little like you, actually.”

You lowered your book enough to gauge his expression—only to find him focused completely on reading.

“Like me?”

“Yes,” he said, still refusing to look at you for what was becoming a suspiciously long while. “Not only did you rally an entire group of rebels into fighting against Dracula, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so stubbornly eager to stay in a rickety, old castle despite my advice against it.”

“And do you regret succumbing to my charm and letting me stay?” you asked in good-humour, but the light-hearted tone must have went over his head, because when he looked at you, the gravity of his eye-contact almost sucked you in and pulled you under, a look best described as a man looking at the worst and best thing in his life and not being able to tell them apart.

“I don’t think I do,” he said, with a voice one hundred miles away, and turned back to his book. "Honestly, it’s a little cold without you around.”

 

* * *

 

“You were a pirate?” Alucard asked, two weeks after the first night of your residency in his castle. It was approaching evening, and the hills circling the horizon partially wrapped the steady glow of the orange sun in a dark, shadowy hood—while the two of you sat at the dining table, finishing a meal of venison he caught that same morning.

“Have I never mentioned it?” A book describing diseases of the skin sat to the left of your plate, opened on a detailed diagram of measles.

“Certainly not.” he said, taking another bite of his food. On his side of the table lay a slightly thinner, leather-bound book on vampire weaknesses that you occasionally noticed him read with a grim look on his face. (When you approached him about it, he said he was determined to grit his teeth and finish it before the end of winter.) “That’s not the kind of thing one would forget.”

“Hah, well you’re gonna be very impressed when I tell you I was the captain.”

The grin that broke through his straight face was as elusive as it was enthralling. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Not at all. In fact, it explains why you were always so eager to boss us around.”

In any other circumstance you might have taken offence, but his easy-going tone was enough to tell you he was kidding.

“Well,” you began dramatically, “maybe if you did a better job listening to Sypha, someone wouldn’t have had to keep you and Trevor from gutting each other.”

“Please, we got along well enough without two nannies telling us what to do.”

“As if!” you said, with the widest grin yet, “you guys couldn’t last four seconds without trying to one-up the other.”

He laughed gently in-between bites of his food. “Well, how else would you have us show off?

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Your prodding must have sent him into a corner, because he opened his mouth to say something that was probably a lot more cohesive in his head than the stutters it came out to be. “Well, uh—you see—”

“Were the two of you just in a constant dick measuring contest?” you said, and laughed, “because honestly that explains a lot.”

“That’s—I suppose that’s certainly one way of putting it.”

Amusement bleeding from all angles, you scoffed, sliding your book across the table and into your lap. “Surely, you must have known Sypha wouldn’t find it attractive to see two adults fighting like jealous kids?”

“Sypha?” he asked. “Who said anything about Sypha?”

Another scoff, this one a little louder. “Well, who else was there?” you asked, and if you hadn’t started reading then and there, you might have noticed the way he stared (timidly, but no less pointedly), straight at you.

 

* * *

 

You fell asleep reading that night.

When the evening receded into the early hours of the morning and the two of you retired to your bedroom to continue reading against the flickering glow of candlelight, the warmth of being nestled beneath the bed-sheets and the serene safety of Alucard’s company (sitting on top of the quilts, back against the wall and as far from you as the bed would let him) snuck up on you quickly.

Carefully (as not to wake you), Alucard brought the covers up to your collar and tucked you in before putting your book on a desk, slipping the feather-end of a quill into the open page as a make-shift bookmark.

Ideally, that would have been the perfect chance to take his leave. Thanks to the long, wintry nights, the sun was still no-where to be seen, and he could safely retire to his room and still be up in time for breakfast.

But he stayed.

It was nice, he realised, to be in your company. To watch you breathe. To talk to someone who treated him without reservation or fear (as though he was just another human), someone who asked him every-day about the book he was reading with a sincere curiosity that often made him sentimental.

Someone he cared about, and someone who, hopefully, cared about him.

“Can you do me a favour?” he whispered into the night and lovingly tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. Shyly, he pressed a kiss to the empty space of skin where it used to be (like his mother did when he was a child), before rubbing the spot away with his thumb and withdrawing to sit against the wall.

“Never leave,” he said, and the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was you.


End file.
